Iran's Foreign Minister Ali-Akbar Salehi said the relationship between Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) will benefit the region, the local satellite Press TV reported Thursday.

In a meeting with his UAE counterpart Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Tehran on Wednesday, Salehi downplayed the challenges to a boost in ties between Tehran and Abu Dhabi, saying that bilateral relations will serve the interests of both countries, according to the report.

The Islamic republic is a secure neighbor for regional countries including the UAE, the report quoted Salehi, who meanwhile urged enhanced bilateral cooperation in all fields, as saying.

The UAE foreign minister also expressed his country's determination in expanding ties with Iran, saying that the UAE will make all efforts to remove any obstacle in the way of enhancing relations.

The meeting came after the UAE's deputy foreign minister for economic affairs Khalid Ghanem Al-Ghaith announced on Wednesday that the United States has targeted Noor Islamic Bank in the UAE over its business dealings with Iran as part of Washington's efforts to press banks around the world to end transactions with Tehran.

The United Nations Security Council and Western countries have imposed a series of economic sanctions on Iran in the past years over the country's controversial nuclear program.

Most of the Iranian financial institutions are barred from directly accessing the U.S. and the European Union financial systems. Also, Washington has put pressures and controls on the international financial institutions which are linked to the Islamic republic and has warned them about the risks of doing business with Iran.

The United States has been rallying its allies in imposing similar sanction pressures on Iran's financial system over its disputed nuclear program, which Tehran describes as solely for " peaceful" use of nuclear energy while the United States and its Western allies suspect as an attempt to acquire nuclear weapons.